Gawker’s Soft Peddling Pedophilia

Recently, Gawker.com, a left-leaning and sometimes profane general interest website, posted a story that makes excuses for child rape, calling it an “orientation” instead of a crime and stating that raping children is “a sexual relationship,” as opposed to the violation that it truly is.

Cord’s piece begins by introducing us to pedophile named “Terry” and we are told that when he was 20 — he’s now 38 — he “began a sexual relationship” with a seven-year-old girl. That a child can engage in a “sexual relationship” is a disgusting characterization but Gawker simply states it as so without protest.

Throughout the piece passive language like this soft peddles child rape. Constantly were are told that sex between adults and children as a “choice.” Even “Terry” claims that the sex he had with his seven-year-old niece was consensual and Gawker simply takes his word for it without protest.

Then the piece goes on to reveal the “expert” testimony of a psychologist that claims that pedophilia is a “sexual orientation” just like homosexuality or even heterosexuality.

The testimony was made before the Canadian Parliament by Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem, formerly of the University of Montreal. He said,

If we know that pedophiles are not simply people who commit a small offence from time to time but rather are grappling with what is equivalent to a sexual orientation just like another individual may be grappling with heterosexuality or even homosexuality, and if we agree on the fact that true pedophiles have an exclusive preference for children, which is the same as having a sexual orientation, everyone knows that there is no such thing as real therapy. You cannot change this person’s sexual orientation.

This implication of mental anguish or disease where people “grapple” with normal sexual relations between a man and a woman is an incredible statement. How one “grapples” with heterosexuality is unknown since it is the most normal of all human interactions. It is easy to see that if the defining of deviancy down like this continues, sex crimes will no longer considered “wrong.”

The entire Gawker article is one excuse after another. Pedophiles aren’t child rapists, we’re told, they have an “orientation,” it is said. Later they are pitied for not being able to talk openly about their sexual fantasies about children because society treats them so harshly.

Coates scolds Gawker as having put out a piece that fails as journalism and is just “an insensitive attempt at being edgy.” Coates criticizes Gawker, saying, “A vague rape apologia runs through this piece–the implication of “men who have sex with children” as an oppressed group, the equation of pedophilia with other sexual orientations, and little to no consideration of victims.”

There is enough here that should alarm the gay community, too. The thing that should scare them most is that this article fully equates child rapists and pedophiles as just like them. The last paragraph is shocking for it dismissive treatment of child rape and its equation of such with “normal” sexual behavior.

The old adage is that the true mark of a society is how it treats the weakest in its ranks. Blacks, women, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and others are still in no way on wholly equal footing in America. But they’re also not nearly as lowly and cursed as men attracted to children. One imagines that if Jesus ever came to Earth, he’d embrace the poor, the blind, the lepers, and, yes, the pedophiles. As a self-professed “progressive,” when I think of the world I’d like to live in, I like to imagine that one day I’d be OK with a man like Terry moving next door to me and my children. I like to think that I could welcome him in for dinner, break bread with him, and offer him the same blessings he’s offered me time and again. And what hurts to admit, even knowing all I know now, is that I’m not positive I could do that.

This is clearly an outrageous characterization of child molesters and Gawker certainly does the gay lobby no favors, here. Homosexuals have for decades fought to have their orientation considered normal and have always decried any effort to put them in the same category as pedophiles. But from the patently obvious harm it does to innocent children, if “psychologists” can start positing that child molesters are “normal” and their desire to rape children a mere “sexual orientation,” one can easily come to doubt the logic of ever having removed homosexuality from the list of mental diseases.

One last thing. Gawker writer Cord should be ashamed of himself for having said that Jesus would “embrace” pedophiles. As the website Poor Richard’s News notes (by way of Newsbusters), the Bible does not excuse pedophilia.

But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me–it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea! — Matthew 18: 6

“Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin, not the embrace of it,” the site notes. “The Bible is very clear that while all sins can be forgiven, Jesus never ever embraces the sin itself. He made no bones about the punishment for harming a child.”

Warner Todd Huston

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago-based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com, BigJournalsim.com and all Breitbart News' other sites, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, and many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs across the country to discuss his opinion editorials and current events as well as appearing on TV networks such as CNN, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and various Chicago-based news programs.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the book "Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture" which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com.
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